At PICA we recognise that we are situated within the unceded lands of the Whadjuk people of the Noongar Nation. We pay our respects and offer our gratitude to Elders past and present, and to those emerging leaders in the community. We acknowledge all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and the importance of their care and continued connection to culture, community and Country.

Always was, always will be.

Galleries are open today, 10am–5pm. Our exhibitions are always free.

Film Screening: Getting to Know You: The King and I in context with Nathan Beard

Film Screening: Getting to Know You: The King and I in context with Nathan Beard

Join PICA exhibiting artist Nathan Beard for a screening of the classic film The King and I. Nathan’s solo exhibition A Puzzlement draws on the film as key source material in representing the ways in which Thailand is viewed in the Western cultural imagination.

Before the screening Nathan will be in conversation with Dr Christina Lee, Senior Lecturer in Communications & Cultural Studies at Curtin University. The pair will unpick the multitude of ways in which The King and I – a film banned in Thailand due to its inaccuracy yet beloved by Hollywood – intersects with complex cultural stereotypes and colonial fantasies.

PICA After Dark sees PICA throw open our doors for a series of late-night music and film events over November and December. Visit our galleries on Friday evenings, enjoy a free* beer thanks to our friends at Rocky Ridge Brewing, and explore our final exhibitions of the year – Pilar Mata Dupont’s Las Hormigas/The Ants and Nathan Beard’s A Puzzlement.  

Timings

Introduction: 5:45–5.50pm (5min)
Conversation: 5.50–6.15pm (25min)
Interval: 6.15–6:25pm (10min)
Screening: 6.25–8:37pm (2hr 13min)

PICA After Dark is supported by City of Perth

*While Rocky Ridge Brewing stocks last. 

About The King and I (1956)

Based on the 1951 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical of the same name – which in turn was based on Margaret Landon’s novel, Anna and the King of Siam (1944), itself based on the 1860s memoirs of Indian-born Anna Leonowens – the 1956 film follows Anna (Deborah Kerr), a widowed schoolteacher and governess, as she arrives in the court of King Mongkut of Siam (Yul Brynner).

Access and Inclusion

If the ticket cost prevents you from attending this event, please don’t hesitate to send us an email at events@pica.org.au and we can discuss alternative arrangements. 

Christina Lee is Senior Lecturer in the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry at Curtin University. She specialises in Film and Cultural Studies, with a focus on cultural memory, spaces of spectrality and imagination, fandom and popular culture. She is the author of Screening Generation X: The Politics and Popular Memory of Youth in Contemporary Cinema, and editor and co-editor of four scholarly anthologies (forthcoming book is Living with Precariousness, I.B. Tauris). Before becoming an academic, Christina worked a variety of art and media-related roles, including as research consultant and videographer on performance-video-installation art works.

Nathan Beard (born 1987) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Boorloo, Perth, Western Australia. Recent exhibitions include White Gilt 2.0, Firstdraft, NSW (2020); Here&Now20: Perfectly Queer, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, WA (2020); White Gilt, Cool Change Contemporary, WA (2019); A dense intimacy, Bus Projects, VIC (2019); Siamese Smize, Turner Galleries, WA (2018); and WA Focus: Nathan Beard, Art Gallery of Western Australia, WA (2017). In 2017 Beard participated in the 4A Beijing Studio Program and is undertaking the Australia Council Residency at ACME Studios, London in 2022. He has been a finalist in the Ramsay Art Prize (2021), The Churchie National Emerging Art Prize (2020) John Stringer Prize (2017), and Fremantle Art Centre Print Award (2015, 2016, Highly Commended 2017, 2018). In 2021 Beard guest edited Runway Journal 43: Divine.


Supporters

CA After Dark is supported by Community Engagement Partner City of Perth and Beverage Partner Rocky Ridge Brewing.

City of Perth, City of Light

 

 

 

 

 

The research of A Puzzlement is facilitated with the support from the Australia Council and ACME Studios programme for 2021/22.

Image: Yul Brynner as King Mongkut, The King and I (1956)